Fraternity-Testvériség, 1994 (72. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)
1994-01-01 / 1. szám
FRATERNITY Page 9 Kossuth: President of the Committee of the Defense of Hungary of his residence and profession: Being an exile for liberty ’s sake, he has no place of fixed residence; is now staying at Cincinnati; his age is 49 and a half years, his occupation is to restore his native land, Hungary to its national independence and to achieve by community of action with other nations civil and religious liberty in Europe. (signed) Louis Kossuth From February 26 through March 2, the party of the Hungarian leader went to Indianapolis, Indiana, and to Madison, Ohio. At the State House in Indianapolis, Kossuth spoke on the differences between the political systems in Europe and America: How different the condition of America! It is not men who rule, but the law. And the law is obeyed, because people are respecting the general will by respecting the law. Public office is a place of honor, because it is the field of patriotic devotion. Governments have not the arrogant pretention to be the masters of the people, but have the proud glory to be its faithful servants. A public officer does not cease to be a citizen. He then traveled South — to St. Louis, where he delivered a splendid address on the fourth anniversary of the bloodless revolution of the Hungarian youth on March 15, 1848 and then on to Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and back to Washington, D.C., on April 13. Visiting Washington’s grave at Mount Vernon, Kossuth remarked on the neglected state of “these hallowed grounds” and moved some Protestant clergymen to make it their duty to maintain it. In late April, Kossuth went to New Jersey and then to New England, the climax of his stay in America. The enthusiasm in Massachusetts, Therese Pulszky wrote, was beyond anything they had yet experienced: “Kossuth’s tour resembles a triumphal march. Wherever we go, bells are ringing, guns roar their salvos, the streets are decked in festive colors, banners flutter, and the population throngs in the streets.” He delivered three addresses in Boston, and said to an overflowing audience at Faneuil Hall: “It is ... in the question of foreign policy, that the heart of the immediate future throbs. Security and danger, prosperity and stagnation, peace and war, tranquility and embarrassment, yet, life and death will be weighed in the scale of foreign policy.” In Cambridge, Kossuth met some of the greatest men of America, among them the dean of the local clergy, Charles Lowell, whose son, the poet James Russell Lowell, wrote in a poem honoring him: Thou hast succeeded, thou hast won the deathly travail’s amplest worth, A nation’s duty thou has done, Giving a hero to our earth. Leaving Massachusetts, Kossuth then toured New York state and then, on July 14, he sailed back to England on the steamer Europe, in the company of his wife and a few friends. Many regarded him as defeated in his purpose to secure military and financial assistance for his troops at the Lower Danube, who were waiting to launch an attack for the liberation of Hungary. Washington Irving, for one, foresaw inevitable failure in Kossuth’s attempt to move politicians in their “smoke-filled rooms” to a grand act on behalf of his tortured fatherland. Nevertheless, Kossuth had an impressive number of distinguished supporters, and was given more than mere encouragement. Prominent citizens gave him detailed advice and pledges regarding the procurement of ships, armaments, and ammunition, and financial support in the form of “Kossuth Fund dollars” in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 20, and 100. While traveling through New Haven, on his way to New England, Kossuth had been invited to inspect the plant of
